How to travel like a boss (part 1)

Feb 18

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How to travel like a boss. Not that guy in charge of you but you know. A BOSS! As we have had some extensive traveling experience, we have put together some tips on travelling well, traveling fun, traveling cheap, traveling far and traveling wide. This is the part 1 installment, so make sure to sign up to be a carnie on the rightside so you will be sure to get the rest of the tips!

1. Use public transportation.

Not only does this save tons of money, it is efficient and it's what the locals do! When we talk about public transit, we immediately think big cities like New York. Yes the subway is fantastic, but also think smaller towns. The bus system is super efficient in most places and super cheap. For a few dollars a day you can get all over town without wasting your gas, getting lost and fighting the parking fight. But! Be smart about it, don't fall into the tourist trap of overpaying! Evaluate what is best: on the subway get the 10$ pass if you are going to be riding multiple places, it lowers your cost per ride and saves you the hassle of finding change every time you hop on and off. In other places, like Vegas, the bus that cruises the strip is an actual city bus. But exit your hotel onto the strip and you get a 4 hour pass for 10$, exit your hotel the back way (onto a normal city street) and get the same bus pass for 24 hours for 5$. Seriously?!

Also, don't forget that getting there by plane or car are not always the best ways! Look for alternatives modes of arriving at your destination. Check into things like trains or MegaBus. These places have crazy cheap deals if you hit it at the right time!

2. Lodging: Hotels are overrated.

Hotels are fantastic and fun if you have serious cash to drop and are a really boring person. Kidding. Kind of. There are so many different routes you can go when it comes to lodging these days! I know your immediate thought goes from hotel to camping. Well, of course camping is an option. We camped our way all the way across America and it was awesome! We used great sites like Reserve America to book our trip as we went. These sites will show you pictures of the sites before you show up and find you are camping in a pit in a strange mans yard. You can see the bathrooms and facilities and find places as nice or as sketchy as you wish! But, if camping isn't your thing, there is SO much more you can do!

If you want the feel of being a real local, stay in one of their houses! The Holiday is by far one my favorite movies and you can do it in real life! Search sites like http://www.homeaway.com/ or www.vrbo.com and stay in an apartment with a kitchen and real life local neighbors in any city you can dream of. If you are quite the adventurous type and are looking for the cheapest way possible then seek out programs like WWOOF. This is next on our to-do list! You get in contact with a local organic farmer for whatever your destination is (no farm experience/knowledge necessary) and work out a deal. You work for a few hours and they provide you lodging and food. Even trade. The rest of your time is yours to spend being a tourist. And for the more, umm, less cautious of us, Couch surf. I suggest using a credible site like this and not Craigslist. But hey, you do you.

3. Food: Cheap, delicious & Authentic.

These are our 3 biggest requirements for eating out on trips. We have been on those family vacations where dad literally sweats through the whole meal because he knows it costs a fortune to eat crumbs in places like Disney World. Well, I'm no expert on Disney World, but I do know some things about eating out in big cities, small towns and on long road trips. We know that eating out on trips always cost more than you think, so we plan for that! We save up our money and time for meals like dinner and pack sandwiches for lunch. This way we don't feel bad about splurging for dinner and we can eat what we want, not the cheapest thing on the menu.

One of the best things we do for meals is to plan ahead. Ask friends or locals or The Internet where the best places to eat are. The biggest mistake we ever make when traveling is the whole "We will just wander around until we find something fabulous for dinner" attitude. This only leaves you hangry (hungry+angry=hangry) and picking the first KFC you find for dinner. We try to have an idea of where we will eat for dinner so that we can plan to be in that area around that time and there are no last-minute bad decisions made on food you don't want, don't like and can't afford. And remember: EAT LOCAL! You are only in this awesome city once, don't eat at Ruby Tuesday's, you can eat there any day! Go somewhere fun, try something new!

4. Get the App.

We live in a world of information at our fingertips. You can do, buy, learn, play anything on those 'ole smart phones the young geisers have these days. But seriously. Use them! This can take away so much stress and frustration and make planning your trip quick and easy! While one of us drives on road trips one of us will use our phones to find and map out all the places we must see/eat/reserve in a city. There is literally an app to help you do everything you need to do when traveling. Some of our favorites are: (PS ALL of these are free)

Lodging: Reserve America, Recreation.gov, hotels.com
Food: AroundMe, UrbanSpoon
Navigation: use the Map App that comes on your phone with the 'on foot' option to navigate between attractions
Tourist attractions: TripAdvisor
Weather: The Weather Channel (not the generic one that comes on your phone), use instaweather to photo document the weather

Need more? Just search any word in the app store and I guarantee there 20 apps that do it are there. Try me.

5. Pre-Plan your photos.

Think I'm kidding? I'm not. I. love. photos. It is how we relive our memories and how we remember fantastic things we forgot. It is our way of preserving life (in a non-scientific creepy way). But! The biggest time waster/regret is not planning your photos before your trip. I mean this generally, so don't get crazy. seriously. enjoy where you are/who you are with/what you are doing.

Go through your scrapbooks/files/etc and take note of the pictures that make it in here. Are they happy tourist posing in a picturesque backdrop? Are they really silly photos from car rides and mishaps? Are they feet pictures? Are they the tiny, but super important details? Whatever it is, focus on those. If you take a million landscape pictures and end up deleting them all in the end, resist the temptation. Dont waste your time taking pictures you will never look at again because 'normal' society says to take the tourist pose!

When traveling to a place you have already been, go through your old photos and make a list of things you want better/different pics of this time around. We have been to New York multiple times, but it is just so awe-inspiring that I want to take pictures of EVERYTHING! And yet when I get home, I see that I have taken the exact same pictures I took last time and delete them. Therefore wasting my time in my favorite city. This time I went through my photos and realized that I was good on iconic photos, I had the statue of liberty, times square, etc. But I was missing little things, like moving taxis, street art, etc.

So make a list. My goal this summer was to take feet pictures of everywhere we went. That was the only shot I cared about. So, in the end I didn't end up upset because I missed something important I wanted because I had my list and my priorities.

Bonus tip: Make your photos fun!

Here a few tips that I always remember when on trips and some links to some other tips from some way better photographers than me!

Dont be scared! Your camera will not break. Take risks with it. Put it on the ground, set the self timer and run! These always end up being my favorite pictures.
Use the self-timer or your timer app (my favorite is TimerCam)
Use a tripod! We have a Gorilla and love it! You can wrap it around trees, stand it up or attach it to crazy things!
Document the little things you might forget. Names of restaurants, towns, mileage, etc. These probably aren't scrapbook worthy pictures, but they help tell your story and remind you of the important details
Take pictures of your food, mishaps, things that inspire you, people you don't know, funny things, quotes on windows, the weather, where you stayed, your view, nice people you meet
Self portrait tips
Other great photo ideas from Elise, from A Beautiful Mess
This is my favorite! Who are you? I am mostly the okey-dokeu, but I go for the hipster when Im feeling frisky. The rock concert only works out for me like 1/10 times.

Photo Via Canvas PressWhat Travel tips do you have? You dont want to miss Part 2, so make sure to enter your email on the right so you will get them delivered to you first!